Washington High School gets ISHAA punishments

SOUTH BEND – The South Bend Community School Corporation announced on Thursday that the Indiana High School Athletic Association (ISHAA) approved the ruling on two different cases over Washington High School Athletes.

The first case dates back to 2008, when former girls' basketball player Jasmine Watson transferred across county lines to be a Jaguar. ISHAA ruled that Watson moved for athletic reasons from Elkhart Memorial.

In the Watson case, ISHAA said Washington High School must pay restitution. The school corporation wouldn’t give out an exact dollar amount for the fine

"It's a significant number as to impose a punishment. It is not a crippling amount of money as far as our current budgets,” said Matthys. The school said the money will be taken from the athletic department and not public funds.

Also the girls’ basketball program is on probation for the 2011-12 school year.

On Thursday Matthys said this helps the program to fully move on from an issue stemming from almost three years earlier.

The second case deals with Darius Hardin. Washington High School said it self-reported that Hardin had been misclassified as a sophomore when he transferred from Milwaukee Public Schools in 2008 based on the information the school received.

The South Bend Community School Corporation Athletic Director Kirby Whitacre said this really was just misclassification.

"Some people will portray this as an attempt to they've recruited this kid, they brought him in, well, we had no indication that he played sports in Wisconsin. He didn't play sports his first year here,” said Whitacre.

In the Hardin case, IHSAA issued a warning to the football, basketball, and track programs at Washington. Also the school must forfeit any wins in which Hardin played.

In the end, Whitacre said the school never wants to be in a situation like this, but at least they helped a student.

"This is a kid who went from a situation that wasn't the greatest in Wisconsin and he's going to play college football and hopefully, get a college degree and I'm happy we made that kind of impact in his life,” said Whitacre.

Both students are continuing to play sports in college.

Watson is now a junior on UMass’ Women’s basketball team.

Hardin is enrolled at Grand Valley State University and will be playing football next fall.

The school mentioned that both these cases are separated and were treated as so.